Sam Boyd

The new Clinton ad Kate mentioned is a big deal. It essentially calls Obama unfit to be commander in chief, but I really don’t get what the difference between the two is. Clinton may have had experience with legislation during Bill’s presidency, but she certainly wasn’t ordering air strikes or whatever. The Obama campaign responds […]

Conservatives seem to have trouble keeping their smears straight these days. On the one hand you have Fox News claiming that former leftist terrorist Bill Ayers was Barack Obama‘s mentor and on the other you have Congressman Jack Kingston arguing that Obama hates America because he doesn’t wear an American Flag pin (hilariously, Kingston had […]

So there was a debate last night and I continued my longstanding policy of intending to watch and then being too lazy to find a friend with cable, but it seems that if I had I’d have ruined both some innocent person’s TV and one or both of my shoes. Apparently, Tim Russert might as […]

Chris Dodd endorses Obama and reinforces the idea that the primary will be over after March 4th. Noam Scheiber has a good piece on Obama’s policy shop, though I think it overstates the extent to which you can say there’s a real ideological difference. Still, it does get at a difference in emphasis and tone […]

Well, so much for Obama and Clinton skipping arm in arm into the sunset as people seemed to expect after the last debate. Today Clinton gave what was billed as a major foreign policy speech, but in fact was just her standard arguments with unusually direct attacks at Obama. Clinton also was viciously sarcastic about […]

As the John McCain/lobbyist story plays out the focus is shifting from self-righteous denunciations of the New York Times to consideration of the issues involved and, especially, McCain’s response. For instance, it turns out that he lied about one aspect of the story and he broke his usual habit of frequent press availabilities. See Josh […]

Julian Sanchez scored the first interview with Lawrence Lessig since he announced his congressional run and I think it answers a lot of the questions Mori raised yesterday. I don’t think Lessig has any illusions about the difficulties of his project nor does he expect to make a difference solely through example. Rather I think […]

The big news today is the New York Times piece on John McCain‘s special interest in a certain lobbyist. While there’s no evidence of sex, the real story is that he wrote several letters for a lobbyist he seems to have had a personal relationship with. The Washington Post has a much simpler story on […]

So Obama won. Again. Even though his 17 point victory in Wisconsin was the smallest margin he’s won by since Feb. 5 he continues to make inroads in Clinton’s key demographic groups, continues to expand his delegate lead, and continues to improve his chances of winning on March 4. How exactly that will play out […]

Lawrence Lessig, best known for his critiques of copyright laws and the creation of the Creative Commons foundation, has recently shifted his attention to political corruption and changing the influence of money in government. Essentially he spent ten years arguing about copyright law, didn’t get anywhere, and wondered why. His conclusion was that money has […]